Allegations of widespread fraud in the recent elections that gave Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party a parliamentary majority have galvanized massive street protests in opposition to the Russian political establishment. This comes on the 20th anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union. "The reason that the people who control the financial oligarchy in Russia don’t want free elections is they know that if...

Syrian troops continue to fire on protesters despite a visit by Arab League monitors to assess the Assad regime’s compliance with a plan to resolve the country’s political crisis. More than 5,000 people have been killed in the nine-month-long uprising. We’re joined from Damascus by Bassel, a Syrian activist and filmmaker just back from the city of Homs, where three dozen people were reportedly killed the day before monitors...

Some 1,000 police officers raided the Occupy Los Angeles encampment in a park outside City Hall overnight, arresting scores of people and evicting what has been the largest Occupy camp in the country. Meanwhile, Occupy Philadelphia protesters vacated their encampment this morning after more than a thousand police moved in and warned them of mass arrests. We get eyewitness updates on both raids from National Lawyers Guild legal observer Ken...

Egypt is in the second day of its first elections since the ouster of longtime president Hosni Mubarak earlier this year. On Monday, Egyptians waited in long lines across the country to choose their first-ever democratically elected parliament. The elections are being held in the wake of fierce clashes between protesters and police last week that left at least 42 people dead and more than 3,100 wounded. We play a video report filed by...

Activists in Egypt are holding their fourth day of massive demonstrations to demand an end to military rule and a transition to a civilian government. The protests continue amidst a massive crackdown and an offer to resign from Egypt’s interim cabinet. Reports from Cairo’s main morgue said at least 33 people have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded in the military government’s crackdown. The turmoil comes as Egypt is...

Thursday’s protest marking the Occupy movement’s second month anniversary coincided with an event planned months earlier by unions and others. Marches were held on bridges across the country to draw attention to how federal funding to fix ailing infrastructure in the country could put unemployed people back to work. Protesters blocked bridges in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, St. Louis, Houston, Milwaukee,...

For the past two months, a website called Global Revolution TV has become the main video hub for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Featuring live video feeds from New York and dozens of other cities hosting Occupy protests, the site has transformed how protests are covered and observed. When OWS protesters hold a general assembly in Zuccotti Park, the gathering is usually live-streamed across the world. When police raided the park early on...

One of the factors that fueled Thursday’s huge march on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City was the dramatic surprise police raid on Zuccotti Park earlier in the week. Among those arrested in the raid was New York City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez. He was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and then held in a police van alone for two hours. Rodriguez’s arrest came just a week after he helped organized an...

Police departments across the country are coming under criticism for using excessive force against Occupy Wall Street protesters during the past two months. In Seattle, Mayor Mike McGinn apologized Wednesday, hours after an 84-year-old retired Seattle school teacher named Dorli Rainey was pepper-sprayed in the face during a protest. Photographs of her moments after she was pepper-sprayed went viral, showing the chemical irritant and liquid...

We host a discussion on policing and the Occupy Wall Street movement with Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which helped organize calls among police chiefs on how to respond to the Occupy protests, and with Norm Stamper, the former police chief of Seattle, who recently wrote an article for The Nation magazine titled "Paramilitary Policing from Seattle to Occupy Wall Street." "Trust me, the police do...